In-Depth Analysis of the Ethereum Prague Upgrade: A Key Step in Changing the Ecological Landscape

Introduction

The development history of blockchain can be described as the expansion history of Bitcoin, while the periodic upgrades of Ethereum represent the core pointer in the direction of expansion.

The major version hard fork upgrade of Ethereum every 1-2 years not only affects Ethereum itself but also gradually radiates to various L2s in the Ethereum series and even extends to the development of multiple L1s. Each hard fork contains EIP proposals that embody the wisdom of the Ethereum core community, representing a balanced result after weighing benefits and costs.

Let us analyze one by one the 11 EIPs of the Prague-Elektra upgrade from a technical perspective, delving into their content, function, and the reasons for their selection.

Background

The upgrade is expected to be released on the Sepolia testnet on March 5 and go live on the Ethereum mainnet on April 8.

The Ethereum official code repository mentioned in the release notes of version 2025.2.26( published 4 days ago ): "Oh look, another hotfix release!". Indeed, there is currently an issue with the version code activated on the Holesky testnet, leading to a testnet fork ( which can be understood as a large-scale outage ).

Although we do not need to delve into the specific code issues of the fork, it also reflects the complexity of the content of this upgrade.

From a personal perspective, this upgrade is the most impactful since the "merger" of PoW to PoS, which will completely change the on-chain operation model and bring a brand new experience.

Panoramic Scan

Overall, this upgrade presents three main characteristics:

1. After Ethereum's development entered a deep-water zone, the new proposal contributors who can be included are basically core members of the Ethereum Foundation. Vitalik is even the primary proponent of important changes. There seems to be little creativity from other roles integrated into official upgrades, which perhaps also confirms the market's voice that "Ethereum is becoming increasingly 'stubborn'", and the decision-making system appears to be becoming more centralized.

2. The market rhythm of Ethereum is accelerating. This upgrade has increased from the 8 EIPs that reached consensus last November to 11, with 3 of the newly added ones being L2 optimizations promoted by Vitalik. In the past, a major version usually focused on just a few optimizations, but now there are almost multiple approaches. The account abstraction, which had been difficult to reach a consensus on for many years, is also included in the hard fork version. This reflects that under the pressure of a flourishing multi-chain environment, with the EVM ecosystem facing the SVM ecosystem like Solana, the Move ecosystem like Aptos, and various BTC L2s thriving, Ethereum has also begun to take some radical measures.

3. Ethereum is increasingly focusing on optimizing user experience by leveraging the advantages of ecological collaboration. You might think this is a given, right? In fact, many of Ethereum's past major version merges had little to do with the ordinary user experience. The previous adjustment to block size ( aimed to reduce user costs and alleviate price fluctuations, which dates back to 2018. The last time, by introducing blobs to significantly lower L2 user transaction fees, and this upgrade, these three points in time highlight that Ethereum is beginning to pay attention to optimizing user costs.

But the question is, does Ethereum really put "user experience first"? Or is it just being forced to optimize user experience?

Experience Optimization

The most significant change is EIP-7702, which introduces the account abstraction mechanism from the chain layer update. We have previously provided a systematic interpretation of this in an article, so there is no need to elaborate further here.

Objectively speaking, EIP-7702 has broken multiple established rules on-chain and has also subverted the application logic of most Dapps.

For users, they are still EOA addresses themselves, only driving and using CA logic when necessary, thus reducing holding costs. There is no need to first convert to an on-chain CA identity and then operate, which is equivalent to users not needing to register. Users can easily achieve multiple parallel transactions with EOA, for example, authorization and execution of deductions can be combined into one, which directly reduces the user's transaction costs.

For Dapps, especially for project parties like exchanges ) that require on-chain enterprise-level management (, this is a disruptive optimization. Once batch aggregation is natively implemented, the costs for exchanges may instantly be reduced by more than half, ultimately benefiting users.

Therefore, despite the many changes brought by EIP-7702, it is worthwhile for all Dapps to study and adapt from a cost perspective. This time, users will undoubtedly stand on the side of EIP-7702.

However, there is also an invisible risk here: while account abstraction lowers interaction costs, it also increases the complexity of user permission management. If wallet providers fail to adapt correctly, it may lead to unexpected security vulnerabilities. In the past, a single operational error might have only resulted in the loss of assets on one chain, but now it could lead to losses across all chains, and even result in timed explosive risks.

Clearly, this is an upgrade that phishing hackers love, and users need to be more cautious when conducting on-chain transactions.

Application Side Optimization

EIP-2537 introduces precompiled operations for the BLS12-381 elliptic curve, which can optimize complex cryptographic operations such as BLS signature verification, providing higher security and computational efficiency. This will make it easier for ordinary users to use multi-signature smart contract wallets at a lower cost, significantly reducing the computational complexity and Gas costs of signature verification. At the same time, it also provides more efficient support for features such as zero-knowledge proofs and homomorphic encryption, helping to enhance privacy protection and cross-chain interoperability.

EIP-2935 stores the hashes of the most recent 8192 blocks in the system contract, facilitating access to historical block data for stateless clients. This is of significant importance for future optimization solutions like Verkle trees. While the impact on ordinary users is minimal, it will promote the development of stateless clients and provide optimization value for applications that require on-chain verification services. It is also beneficial for services like Rollup L2 and oracles that need to verify historical block information.

Multiple Optimizations for Staking Scenarios

EIP-6110 will implement staking operation processing through on-chain protocol mechanisms, enhancing the security and efficiency of the staking process.

EIP-7002 allows the execution layer to trigger validator exits and partial withdrawals, increasing the flexibility of fund control.

EIP-7251 raises the effective staking limit for a single validator to 2048 Ether, but the minimum staking limit remains at 32 Ether.

EIP-7549 optimizes the proof message structure in the consensus layer, improving verification efficiency.

These optimizations aim to accommodate the rapid growth of validator clusters, reduce system complexity, while maintaining decentralization. They provide large node operators the possibility to merge validator accounts, while also bringing more flexibility to smaller validators. This may result in more ETH being locked in staking, further strengthening the security of Ethereum.

Optimization of the L2 Ecosystem

EIP-7623 increases the gas fees for calldata in transactions by 2.5 times, aiming to reduce block pressure and encourage more use of Blob storage in L2.

EIP-7691 increases the capacity of blobs in each block, thereby supporting larger-scale L2 storage space.

EIP-7840 adds a configuration file that allows clients to dynamically adjust the number of blobs and gas pricing.

These improvements highlight that Ethereum is providing better infrastructure support for the L2 ecosystem. By optimizing data storage and pricing mechanisms, Ethereum is paving the way for further development of L2.

Conclusion

The Prague upgrade, although not sparking widespread market discussion like the previous "London" or "Merge" upgrades, has quietly laid a higher foundation for scalability and decentralization within the Ethereum network. The advancement of account abstraction will lower the barriers to entry for users, improvements in the staking mechanism will enhance network security, and the increase in data availability and throughput will provide greater development space for the L2 ecosystem.

This upgrade reflects that Ethereum is striving to adapt to market demands while also paving the way for significant future improvements such as Verkle trees and single-slot finality. In the long run, Ethereum's development roadmap remains clear and steadfast, and these cumulative upgrade effects will drive Ethereum towards a more efficient and decentralized direction.

With the possible delay of the Osaka hard fork ) until the end of 2026 and the approaching Amsterdam hard fork in 2026, we look forward to each upgrade making Ethereum more mature, robust, and feature-rich.